Happy Pig

The inevitable happened last Saturday. After 3 months of contentedly staying in their pig glens, rotated from paddock to paddock every two weeks or so, happily contained by two low strands of electric fence, the pigs made a break for it.

The rains last Friday softened the soil making ideal rooting conditions for the pigs. So ideal that they rooted up piles of soil completely covering the fence. Either late in the day on Friday or early Saturday the entire herd of 29 pigs escaped with nothing between them and 5000+ acres of mountain land. My son-in-law, Devan, after coming in from roaming the farm on his ATV, asked the long dreaded question, “Where are the pigs supposed to be?”. He had seen tracks and signs of rooting far back in the woods. He had also spotted a few pigs near the Upper Barn where the pigs had lived until they were big enough to go out into the grazing paddocks.

I headed out to the upper barn with visions of chasing the pigs though the mountain for months, and maybe never getting them all back. When I arrived at the barn about half the pigs were milling around. That is when our pig socialization training paid off. All summer we have been taking our salad trimmings, excess/spoiled garden produce, cracked eggs, etc. to the pigs. Each time I gave them a treat I would give my hog call and the pigs would come running. The same thing happened on Saturday. I opened their old pen in the barn, flushed out a few chickens that were milling around and hollered SOOOUUUUEEEE HERE PIG, PIG, PIG. The pigs milling around the barn when right in the pen. I called a few more times and in a few minutes the rest of the pigs came running over the hill and into the pen.

On Sunday Bryn and I finished the electric fence around the pigs 7 acre woodland paddock. Now we had to get the pigs from the barn to their new paddock in the woods. Yesterday evening all available family (eight of us in all) gathered for a pig dive. I went in front calling and leading the pigs to their new paddock with the rest of the family encouraging the stragglers, to our great suprise this actually works. The pigs are now in the woods contentedly munching the acorns that this weekend’s winds and rain brought down, and once again the time spent in training/conditioning happy, well socialized livestock has paid off big time.

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